It has been a privilege to serve as Permanent Secretary of the Lord Chancellor's Department and of the DCA. The last year has been the busiest and most challenging of my six years in office.
In Government the most important task for the Permanent Secretary of any Department is to ensure that the way it is organised and the skills of the people it employs provide the best quality of service to its Ministers and through them to Parliament; and especially in a department like the DCA which serves the public directly, to people of every background right across the country.
In the last 18 months in particular I have tried to provide a platform of organisation, and senior people, for the Department to work forward with confidence. All the operational activities of the Department were brought together under a Chief Executive Operations and Second Permanent Secretary (Ian Magee); we recruited a new Director General in charge of Finance from the private sector (Simon Ball); a new Chief Executive of the Legal Services Commission from the Department for Work and Pensions (Clare Dodgson); and from the National Health Service, (Sir Ron De Witt), to lead the new Unified Courts Agency.
We have added three distinguished non-executive Directors to our Board: the Deputy Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Justice Judge; the Chairman of Private Equity Investor plc, the Honourable Barbara Thomas; and the former Chief Executive of British Telecommunications, Sir Peter Bonfield.
This balance of executive and non-executive expertise at the top reflects a dual purpose: an efficient business-like focus on the use of taxpayers' money and better service delivery to our customers; and a genuine partnership with the judiciary which is essential to successful reform of the justice system.
This reshaping of the Department has gone hand in hand with substantial improvements on asylum (with the Home Office); in criminal justice and on fine enforcement (with other CJS Departments and Agencies); and in financial discipline. We have a substantial legislative programme and now the shadow running of the new Unified Courts Agency.
I want to thank all those who have worked with me in LCD and DCA over the last six years. I hope I leave for the Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor, and for my successor, a Department much transformed and its staff growing in confidence, capacity and skill.
Sir Hayden Phillips GCB
Permanent Secretary